


listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door

by scifive



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Disney - All Media Types, Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: (They Absolutely Will‚ Who Are We Kidding‚ Just Not In This Fic), Alcohol, Crack, Gen, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension, do not copy to another site, will they won't they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifive/pseuds/scifive
Summary: It's not thefirsttime Cloud's woken up in a bar, but it's definitely theweirdest. Turns out the cosmic equivalent of the green room has debatable karaoke, an unspeakable bartender, a suspicious clientele, and (mercifully) an open bar.The problem is that Cloud isn't the only new face in the room.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door

**Author's Note:**

> i have five (5) WIPs on the go and instead my brain threw this out over three (3) days. (can you guess who got the KH remaster two weeks ago. can you.)
> 
> Title from ['pity this busy monster, manunkind' by e. e. cummings](https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/pitmonster.html).
> 
> takes place just before the cut-scene after you fight Cloud for the first time in KH1. rating for extremely mild language. unbeta'd.
> 
> [Updated 2021-03-13: Minor typos, some word choice changes.]

The fact that Cloud woke up at all came as something as a surprise, mostly because he didn’t remember blacking out.

The bar wasn’t exactly expected, either.

“We got another one,” announced a voice. “Hey. Hey kid, come on, up and at ‘em, you’re blocking foot traffic to the bathroom and your guy’s gotta empty the amphora, if you know what I mean. Scoot, c’mon, up ya get—”

Hands pulled Cloud upright. Cloud wobbled for a moment before getting his feet under him, and then wondered fixedly exactly how dead he was, because his head might have been fuzzy as hell but the hands in question definitely belonged to a very grey, very tall man with blue flames for hair.

“Uh,” Cloud said intelligently.

“Guess it’s official now, the darkness has _definitely_ got a controlling interest in you,” said Hades, slinging an arm companionably about Cloud’s shoulders. He spoke with an easy confidence, as though anything he just said should mean something to Cloud; the way he had said ‘darkness’ had a weird ring to it, too. “I always did know how to pick ‘em. Hey,” he added, in a louder voice, and swept his other arm across the room, “welcome to the club, guy.”

This was the weirdest club Cloud had ever been in, and that included the one time he’d accidentally wandered into the SOLDIER fetish place in the Golden Saucer.

The room was large and high-ceilinged, like an old ballroom that had been retrofitted as a bar once the dance-hall decades were done. Lighting filtered down from dusty chandeliers and the occasional brass wall sconce. Tables evenly dotted the room, with an assortment of chairs at each. On a stage at the end of the room, what looked like a possessed hand-puppet was belting out boogie numbers on a battered karaoke machine; it had a surprisingly rich vibrato and was also perpetrating some frankly disturbing dance moves. The various occupants of the room, each uniquely strange in their own right, were generally watching the display with active disinterest.

“Uh,” said Cloud again. Hades followed his line of sight and rolled his eyes.

“Don’t mind Oogie, _there’s_ a guy with ants in his pants and I mean that _very_ literally,” said Hades, steering him deftly across the slightly sticky carpet. “Here, lemme introduce you to some folks who know what the deal is.”

The folks, it turned out, were three other people sitting at a nearby table, and were only just less odd than the display on the stage.

“You too, huh?” commiserated a huge bear — dog? — _thing_ — in a complicated jumpsuit.

“Me… too?” hazarded Cloud.

“You crossed blades with that young rapscallion!” interjected another table occupant, a wild-eyed man wearing an absurd red hat and a moustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Golden Saucer’s seedier establishments. “That yellow-bellied codfish, that jumped-up cabin boy—”

“Spare me,” interrupted the table’s third occupant, with an elegant eye-roll. She was tall and gaunt with a faint green tinge to her skin, and she wore a headpiece of long, curling horns with a surprising degree of elegance. “He means,” she added, turning her sharp, assessing stare on to Cloud, “that you too have experienced defeat at the hands of the wielder of the Keyblade.”

“The wielder of the _what_ ,” said Cloud flatly.

“Some snot-nosed punk with a sword that looks like a key,” Hades offered. He did not sound pleased.

That threw up a few cards in Cloud’s mental rollodex. His brow wrinkled.

“Do you mean _Sora?_ ” he said. “Kid about yay high, brown hair, kinda like—” He indicated his own uncontrollable hair with a vague hand gesture.

The men at the table groaned all at once. The woman sipped her drink — something clear, and with an olive on a stick — with exquisite poise, though Cloud did detect another slight eye-roll.

“Yeah, _that_ brat,” said the bear-dog darkly.

“Those appear to be the rules of this wretched place,” declared Moustache, hand resting absently on top of what Cloud could see was a duelling rapier. Cloud’s own hand itched for the hilt of his distinctly-absent sword, but he kept his hands relaxed and his shoulders as level as he could. “One takes a sound thrashing from the scurvy sea-dog, and then one ends up here, to drink our sorrows in rum and vile whiskey until—”

“Captain,” said the woman, cutting across Moustache with all the efficacy and absoluteness of a scalpel. “We rather have the picture. Thank you. Yes, young man,” she added, turning back to Cloud. “We are all here for falling in battle against this ‘Sora’.” The disdain dropped neatly into place. “I assume that you met the same fate?”

“I,” said Cloud, and he paused for a long moment, feeling the edges of something brush gently against conscious reach. The kid, Sora, a grin; a coliseum, a gross little goat-man, a young guy with the strength to carry a whole word. And from that — Hades, yeah, and — a deal, no, a _contract_ — then combat, the sense of loss and failure, tempered by an easy respect for an opponent fighting with easily _the_ most unique weapon Cloud had ever seen.

The others at the table waited patiently, drinking from their glasses and staring somewhat listlessly at the twerking puppet — Oogie, Hades had called him — on-stage.

“I… think so,” said Cloud eventually, a little slowly. “There was a fight in a… a tournament? At a coliseum. Sora and the Keyblade.”

“That’ll do it,” said Hades confidently, and clapped him on the shoulder. “The little brat beats the crap outta you, and then you wake up here.”

“But,” said Cloud, confused, “our contract. We only made it three days ago. How…”

“Oh,” said the woman, arching an eyebrow and looking at Cloud with renewed interest. “Is he one of _yours_ , Hades?”

“Ehh, sort of,” Hades said with a hand-wave. “He’s a freelancer, you know these go-getters, always bouncing from contract to contract, it’s a young man’s game. We struck a deal, and then the li’l _Keyblade Master_ got involved” — this was said between pointy, gritted teeth, hair flaring in a brief burst of orange — “and then bada-bing, bada-boom. Yeah, you can guess the rest.”

“Time don’t work the same here,” the bear-dog informed Cloud, scratching idly at his chin. “People just show up whenever. Even if they’re from the future. Dunno why.”

“No kidding,” said Hades, sounding hard-put-upon. “Ya bounce on into this place halfway through making plans for your hostile takeover, only to find out from the peanut gallery here you’ve already done it. And it didn’t even _work_ , for crying out loud, _not_ that you’ll remember that. Hell of a way to end a corporate restructuring, and trust me, I’d know. Anyway, be right back, ladies and gents, gotta drain the Hydra.”

“ _Must_ you be so crass,” said the woman icily at Hades’ retreating back.

“So, that’s the deal?” Cloud asked cautiously. “Sora wins a fight, loser wakes up in this bar?”

“Pretty much,” said the bear-dog, shrugging. “Ain’t seen you around here before, though. Name’s Pete.” He saluted Cloud with a very large tankard.

“Captain James Hook, commander of the Jolly Roger _at_ your service,” said Moustache, with a sweeping bow and a dramatic flourish that nearly upset the wine glass in front of him. One of his hands ended in a wicked-looking hook. Subtlety, Cloud was learning, was not a strong point amongst the clientele.

“You may call me Maleficent,” said the woman with a very, very thin smile.

“Cloud,” said Cloud, looking around briefly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m surprised there aren’t more people here. From what I heard, Sora travels a lot.”

“Yeah,” sniffed Pete, eyeing his tankard with critical resignation. “Sometimes people go back, y'know? Go back to their world, ‘specially if they gots stuff to do, or their world is changin’ or whatever.”

“Our return appears to be predicated on the movement of the darkness,” said Maleficent, and something about the way she said it sounded a bit like Hades had; it made the words show up in Cloud’s ears as _the Darkness_. Something important. Something… familiar. “Its successes, and its failures. When it needs us, it calls us back, though I understand some of us have managed to find our own way home, once or twice.”

“Why haven’t you?” Pete asked her, brow furrowed comically. (Cloud got the feeling Pete wasn’t exactly the brains of the operation.)

As if in answer, there was an immediate duet of high, grating laughter from a table closer to the stage. A large woman in a red and black dress complete with a heart-adorned crown, and what might have been a purple octopus lady propped up on a bar stool, were shrieking with laughter, the entire table between them littered with empty drinks glasses.

Cloud looked back to see Maleficent give him another cold, thin smile.

“Open bar,” she said delicately, and tilted her glass with elegant precision toward something behind Cloud.

Now _that_ was an idea.

“Ma’am,” Cloud nodded, and turned. He took two steps towards the bar and stopped immediately.

The bar was several long, beautifully-polished lengths of wood, penning square around a huge set of spirit shelves that were in turn backed up against the wall of the ballroom. It was probably quite a large set-up. Cloud didn’t notice too many of the fine details, however, because of the bartender.

The bartender was thirty-odd feet tall, towering up toward the ceiling. It was broadly human-shaped, but appeared to made of gently-writhing black tendrils, slightly blurry as though shadowed. Two yellow lights glowed in place of eyes, expressionless and unblinking; the bottom half of its face was covered in tendrils of the grey shadows, masklike. Its body was wide, strong with bizarre musculature and its hands disproportionately huge and clawed. There was a strange cut-out through its entire torso in the perfect, clean lines of a heart. It should not have fitted behind the bar. Somehow, in some non-Euclidean folding of space and matter, it did.

One of its hair tendrils, Cloud noted as if from very, very far away, was polishing a glass with a rag.

“Oh, don’t mind the barkeep,” said a grating voice next to him. The purple octopus lady sashayed past Cloud, somehow managing to do an extremely raunchy hip sway even with tentacles. “He’s a big softy, really. The name’s Ursula, dear, now do clear the way. Ohh daaaaaarling! Fetch me another Screaming Orgasm.”

“I’ll have what _she’s_ having!” screeched the lady in the red and black dress, and both women screamed into raucous laughter again as Ursula made her way back to the table, fresh drink in hand.

With a climbing sense of unreality, Cloud noticed that he could see the familiar shape of a bottle of Wild Chocobo gin on the spirit shelf, clearly visible through the heart cut-out the bartender had instead of an actual, you know, torso. The bottle looked wistfully like home and also blissful intoxication, and it got Cloud's feet moving.

“Uh, hi,” he said, upon reaching the bar. The bartender stared down at him, utterly impassive. “You too?”

The bartender did not react, motionless and silent.

“Listen,” said Cloud, feeling more and more stupid by the moment, “I don’t know if— could you— there’s this drink a friend of mine makes. Called a Golden Chocobo. It’s—”

The bartender was already moving. With steady, extremely precise care, it selected the gin and the mixers, shook them together in a cocktail shaker held between two huge fingers, and poured the results into a highball glass. The fact that its hands were far too large for the bottles or the equipment didn’t seem to faze it, and neither did the fact that it shouldn’t have been able to move in the space behind the bar without destroying the entire set-up.

“Thanks,” said Cloud and downed the whole drink in one go. It was pretty good, actually.

Putting the glass back down brought him back to unblinking, unnerving eye-contact with the bartender, who was staring at him with an steady implacability that suggested it could, and absolutely would, do it for the rest of eternity.

“Another, please,” said Cloud, and then slammed that one, too, trying not to notice how the bartender’s tendrils were replacing various items on the shelves as its hands worked over the mixing.

Wordlessly, the bartender refilled Cloud’s glass again. Trying to not look as ridiculous as he felt, Cloud sipped at this one and leaned against the bar, casting a glance around the room again and picking up a few fresh details.

In many respects, the room looked like any other old, slightly dingy bar, even if the high ceilings did suggest a finer history. The chandeliers were complicated crystal edifices, but they also looked cracked and a little yellowed by time. The wallpaper was textured but, like the carpet (itself a rich burgundy), very worn and with a few unspeakable stains, especially near the bar. More oddly, there was a _massive_ painting of a circular eye, set into thick, grey skin, thirty feet up on the wall across from Cloud; there was also a huge cat basket across the room, occupied by a tightly-curled, vicious-looking leopard.

The less said about the scruffy-looking lion — a dusty sand colour with a scraggly black beard, apparently holding a cogent conversation with a religious-looking man wearing black robes and the sourest face Cloud had ever seen — the better.

Cloud knocked the rest of his drink back.

“Could I just have the bottle?” he asked the bartender, deciding to maximise efficiency.

The bartender very carefully took hold of the bottle of Wild Chocobo in a single dark tendril, and deposited it with delicate precision on the surface of the bar. It didn’t otherwise move, maintaining that deeply disconcerting eye contact with Cloud, Gaia help him.

With great finality, the bartender dropped a crazy straw directly into the mouth of the bottle.

“Great,” said Cloud, and took three straight swallows. “Thanks.”

The bartender made no response. It settled into the steady stare that appeared to be its default when no other concern presented itself.

“ _I’ve GOT you… under my skin,_ ” Oogie crooned in the background, and then let loose a surprisingly filthy laugh amidst the sound of ripping fabric. There was an answering duet of delighted, raucous cackles that sounded like Ursula and her friend. Cloud _deeply_ did not want to turn around, so he focused on the bottle in front of him instead.

Cloud had managed to sink another third of the bottle, feeling disappointingly without buzz, when the bartender drifted away. A red-and-black-robed man, rake-thin, wearing a turban and approximately three pounds of eye make-up (hey, Cloud wasn’t judging, the man was working it; that eyeliner wasn’t easy to apply, Cloud knew, with the deep certainty that came from his time at the Honey Bee Inn) was requesting a complex cocktail in a rich drawl. Idly wondering what _his_ story was, or the deal with the snake-looking staff, Cloud glanced across the bar and then stopped, his entire brain crystallising into sudden, sharp cold focus.

Across the way, and now visible through the heart-cut out of the impossible bartender, was a man. He had no drink in front of him, and he was seated at the bar in an elegant lean, fingers steepled in front of his mouth. His hair was very long and very silver. His eyes were sharp enough that Cloud could feel them cutting into him, acid-green, even with the expanse between them.

He didn’t have his sword. Cloud didn’t even register that; the loss of his weapon should have been catastrophic, should have filled him with the steady toxic beat of a fear being circulated by his own heart, but Cloud had instincts, now, instincts wrapped around his bones, a furious desperation that sharpened him to a razor’s edge even without the Buster sword or First Tsurugi. Tactics spun out before him, steps in a dance that usually ended with the ring of steel and the draw of blood, and Cloud saw Sephiroth stand, straighten, and set his shoulders into a combat stance.

Sephiroth was _smiling_.

The entire room faded from relevance. Cloud rounded the bar with a fluid, aggressive grace, entering a free field of combat, preparing to move, to twist, to become the weapon he didn’t carry, raw hands and bare violence against this, the calamity, the world-ender—

Rich, oily blackness erupted beneath him, spreading with deceptive speed across the worn carpet at the bar. Thick tendrils, no more presence than a shadow, wound up both of his ankles and he staggered, feet sinking into the blackness. The tendrils had all the weight and presence of a breath, but they held faster than any restraints, dragging him down into that darkness, inexorable.

 _No_ , he thought desperately, looking up and expecting to see death coming in at head-height, swift and merciless and serene as an angel. But — wait, no, this wasn’t — Sephiroth was shin-deep in a separate pool of darkness as well, twenty feet distant but equally as restrained, balanced but stymied. His eyes, green and glowing and narrowed, were fixed unmovingly on Cloud. His hands were empty of the Masumune.

Cloud looked up as the figure of the bartender loomed over the bar between them, its blank eyes fixed first on Cloud, and then on Sephiroth. With slow, ponderous inevitability, it leaned forward and stretched its arm out, further and further, blocking the space between them. Huge as the bartender was, it shouldn’t have been able to reach that far — like it folded the dimensions of its space to suit it, that the world, wherever they were, was not an impediment to the shapes and the shadows it contained.

Its pointed finger tapped one, twice, thrice on a wooden sign hung upon the wall opposite. Burned into the wood in steady, clear letters were the words NO FIGHTS — NO BRAWLS — NO REFUNDS.

Cloud stared at the sign. He stared back at the bartender, who stared impassively back. Its arm remained extended. He stared back at the sign. Cloud had never felt so wrong-footed, literally and figuratively, in his entire baffling existence.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” he said flatly, and tried to turn. To his surprise, the blackness let go of his feet without resistance. Cloud clambered back up to floor level and stalked over to his bottle of Wild Chocobo, crazy straw and all, grabbing it in a curt, fluid swipe.

He was on his way to a table in the furthest part of the room when Maleficent extended a finger at him. Cloud might have been half-blind with rage and unseen violence, a screaming panic clawing hard at his insides as though it could cannibalise him from within, but he wasn’t stupid. He detoured to her table, back firmly to the bar and clutching his bottle of gin with an unrelenting, desperate hand.

“That’s one of our rules,” she said, mild condescension in her politeness as he approached. “No fighting whatsoever. I’m afraid we had to do _something,_ what with the… _situation_ with the Captain.”

“The situation,” repeated Cloud flatly.

“It wasn’t just me,” Hook said sullenly.

“There _were_ also the numerous incidents in which the buffoon Clayton attempted to shoot that ratty leopard,” added Eyeliner in a silky drawl, passing by their table. He had a drink in each hand and supercilious look on his face, his staff hooked neatly though one elbow. “And Scar. The _noise_ , by Allah. But I think, Captain, that you might be considered the worst offender.”

“Oh, Jafar, meet the new guy,” Pete said, waving a large hand at Cloud. “Betcha happy to see a new face finally, huh?”

Eyeliner paused, and looked at Cloud: wild-eyed and twitchy; clutching a bottle of neat gin complete with crazy straw; fresh from half a bar brawl; vibrating gently from aftershock and wired violence.

“ _Ecstatic_ ,” he said in the driest goddamn voice Cloud had ever heard, and kept walking.

This was getting off-track.

“ _The situation_ ,” repeated Cloud to the table, a little louder.

“It’s the whale,” said Pete, as though that were an explanation, throwing back the last of whatever was in his tankard. It smelled vaguely petrochemical, even from across the table. “Cap’s got a thing about the whale. Blew up the bar more’n a few times.”

“The _whale._ ” Cloud had no idea what his face was doing, but it probably wasn’t good.

“It’s not right,” said Hook. He was scratching his hook mulishly against the surface of the table, leaving rips in the faded tablecloth and jagged, splintered grooves in the wood underneath.“’Tis unnatural, for a beast such as it to swallow a man. Or his boat. On my honour, I ought to avenge the seas of the foul animal.”

“Hey, Monstro got every right to be here, same as us,” said Pete sagely, and jerked his thumb. Cloud followed it to see the eye in the painting on the wall — no, not a painting, he realised blankly, some kind of _window_ — roll down to look at them.

No. Nope. Absolutely not.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said stiltedly to Maleficent, and stalked off to the furthest table from absolutely everything. He ended up sitting at a table next to the door of the bathroom, his head in his hands. His bottle of Wild Chocobo sat forlorn and abandoned on the table itself, the crazy straw twinkling gently in the muted lighting.

“ _Oops! I — did it again; I played with your heart, got lost in the game,_ ” crooned Oogie, somewhere mercifully out of Cloud’s line of sight. He appeared to have a backup chorus of multiple extremely highly-pitched, and somehow very _small_ voices. Cloud very resolutely did not think about it.

“Hello _,_ _Cloud_.”

Cloud stayed exactly where he was, face between his palms, lungs pressing down inexorably until all the breath had left him in one long, steady push. He chose that moment to look up slowly, feeling his heart slam against the empty mass of his chest cavity, steady and stabilising.

Sephiroth met Cloud’s eyes for a long, intense moment, before seating himself with exceptional grace of movement into the chair on the opposite side of the table. In a single elegant, sinuous motion, he swept his long hair over one shoulder, saving it from whatever murky horrors lurked on the carpet below them. The ends of his leathers were a little ragged.

His slit-pupilled gaze never wavered.

“I always said I’d see you in Hell,” said Cloud numbly. He pressed his hands on the table in front of him for lack of better options. He felt a long way away from himself, distant and unreal. “I didn’t know I meant it.”

“Come now,” said Sephiroth in a soft purr, tilting his head a few degrees, “this isn’t Hell. But I could show you, if you wanted. All you have to do is come with me.”

“Why are you here,” said Cloud emptily, remaining completely motionless. “I was looking for you.”

“I know,” said Sephiroth, the familiar low murmur. There was that small smile, eyes lidded under silver and promising beautiful horrors, promising heat and darkness and pain. “I am here because you are here. Because you’re a part of me, Cloud. The sooner you accept the darkness, the sooner you accept _me_ , the stronger you will become.”

“The darkness,” Cloud said again, remembering what Maleficent said. An ordinary noun with all the symbolism of a proper noun, _the Darkness._ “Everyone here talks about it. What does it have to do with _you?_ ”

“You are but a pawn of the darkness, of a higher power,” said Sephiroth, leaning forward slightly, his smile stretching out. “And you know what that’s like, don’t you, _puppet?_ ”

“ _Don’t—_ ” snarled Cloud, and he had a moment of dizzy contradiction, every mako-enhanced muscle screaming to fight, to defend, to protect everyone because of and from that single word, even as his conscious mind cut down ruthlessly on the instinct. He could see the edges of the wisps of the bartender in his peripheral vision, and the thought of being devoured into that inky shadow, fully, completely—

—well. There were worse things than a fight.

Cloud breathed out slowly, forcing his hands out of their fists. His knuckles popped.

“Why are you _here,_ Sephiroth,” Cloud said again, jaw tight. Sephiroth blinked at him slowly, amused. He’d not moved a single inch.

“Because of you, Cloud,” he said softly. “That you don’t like to hear it doesn’t change the facts. You are a part of me. My story. My cells. My _will_.”

“So you go where I go, is that it? I’ve just been chasing my tail?”

Sephiroth spread his hands wordlessly, movements almost insultingly slow, effortless control. Cloud, in contrast, felt like as soon as let go of his iron grip on himself he’d shake himself to pieces, anchorless, undefended.

“Then why couldn’t I _find_ you.”

“You weren’t looking in the right place,” said Sephiroth simply, running one gloved thumb idly along the edge of the table. He didn’t stop looking at Cloud, taking in the sight of him as though he had the right. “You need to look into the darkness. To accept it. To join it.”

Oh, that rhetoric was a little too close to home for Cloud. He’d have stiffened further, if he wasn’t at his most tense already.

“I don’t work toward the darkness,” said Cloud hotly. “I work toward the light. I always have. You should know that by now.”

“Even when it costs you everything,” said Sephiroth softly, meaningfully, and oh, that hurt, that _hurt_.He saw his own pain reflected in the monster across the table, reflected and refracted and _consumed_ , satiated by it.

Cloud drew a ragged breath, and Sephiroth smiled again. _Gaia_ , Cloud felt like a broken computer, combat circuits looping endlessly, trying to come online even as he ruthlessly suppressed them.

“It’s worth it,” Cloud bit out finally, and it felt like half a lie. The fate of his world, the fate of the people in it, his friends — they were worth it. They had to be, even as the grief of losing so many, the grief and the guilt of losing so precious few, smoothed poisonously up his throat.

(He saw, for a moment, a single black materia.)

“Come with me,” murmured Sephiroth, sliding a single hand out across the table, palm-up. “Come with me into the darkness. It won’t hurt any more. I promise.”

Cloud looked at his hand for a long moment. There was an easy inevitability to the sight, a gentle suggestion in the bones of his own arm that taking it would feel natural, feel right, two halves of a whole joined palm-to-palm, holy palmers’ kiss. 

Well. Feelings were one thing. Knowing was another. Cloud looked back to Sephiroth, his own hands unmoving.

“You never made a promise you were able to keep,” he said. He made it sound calm. “I don’t think you’d keep this one, either.”

“Mm,” said Sephiroth, smile dimming somewhat but still there, cool, cruel, amused. His hand remained open, inviting. “But you have always suffered so beautifully, Cloud. And the darkness would help you find the people you fight so hard to protect. Wouldn’t going back to them be worth the price?”

“Putting you down was always more important. It still is.”

“And that’s why you made your… _contract_ ,” said Sephiroth, and oh, Gaia, his eyes were getting sharper, his presence seeming bigger, center-point of a hunt. “All to find me. I’m touched at your devotion, puppet.”

Cloud didn’t have a response to that. He wished he had the words to say how it wasn’t about Sephiroth, it was about literally _everyone else_ getting to live safe, in peace, divorced from the horrors of a man who saw a world and thought that burning it to ashes was all the fuel he’d ever need.

Sephiroth turned his hand flat to the table and stood, every moment incredibly controlled. Pinned by the rules of this place and the presence of the nightmare taking slow steps toward his side of the table, Cloud remained frozen in place even as his breathing became choppy, broken with unburned adrenaline.

It was only three steps before Sephiroth stood looming directly over him. _He can’t hurt me_ , Cloud thought crazily, _he can’t hurt me, the darkness here won’t let him_ —

With a slow inevitability, Sephiroth brought his hand up. Cloud leaned back in his chair, all the movement he could afford without breaking into outright violence, tilting away, tilting back and out of reach. It didn’t help; Sephiroth closed the distance to Cloud’s face, slipping his hand under the curve of Cloud’s jaw. Cloud felt the worked leather pressed against his cheekbone, his neck, his skull, holding steady with the most absolute assumption of control. Contemplatively, Sephiroth drew his thumb over Clouds lower lip.

Cloud blinked and a pulse _slammed_ through him, a beat of _home yes mine mother master,_ natural and easy as dying _._ Everything flickered, went pale and jade-edged, clear and high-contrast, like the truth at the heart of the worlds.

The bar went away. Completely. Cloud could hear nothing, _see_ nothing, no-one, that wasn’t the figure in front of him, hypnotic. He drew a breath and it was easy, not laboured, staring up unblinkingly into the eyes above him. His hands were very loose.

“I want you, Cloud,” said Sephiroth, so quiet as to almost be a whisper. It didn’t matter, here in the most absolute silence Cloud had ever experienced. “I own you. I control you. There is a piece of myself in you, and there always will be. You can feel it. Come with me, my puppet, into the darkness. Tell me what you want, and you will have it, if you’ll come with me.”

“I want,” said Cloud, slurring a little over the words. Sephiroth was so beautiful, everything he’d admired, emulated, ever since he was a child. His guiding star. “I want…”

“Tell me,” murmured Sephiroth, and he stroked his thumb against Cloud’s lip again.

Cloud’s eyelids slipped closed, and he stayed like that for a long moment. He felt like the floor was sliding out from under him, quietly and almost gently, leaving nothing but a long, peaceful fall. He was so far from home, so far from everyone — Tifa, Cid, Nanaki, Yuffie, Vincent, Barret and Marlene, Aerith. He was so far away and it hurt so much.

Cloud opened his eyes again, clear and unjaded. He gently moved his hand up to Sephiroth’s wrist, his own ungloved fingertips seeking out and finding the bare skin at the edge of the leather, the muscle and bone of the Nightmare. Cloud saw the skin contact flare in Sephiroth’s eyes, raw rage splitting his cat’s pupils wide.

(His skin was so warm. So human. Cloud felt that fact catch him for a moment.)

“No,” Cloud said, and he moved Sephiroth’s hand away with a gentleness that Cloud could see burning up in Sephiroth’s eyes, fury ignited. He pushed his chair out and stood, still looking up at Sephiroth but stronger, now, on his own two feet. The room was in good clear focus, unadulterated, and Cloud felt rock-steady. “I want to build a home. You, or the darkness, can’t help me do that.”

Over Sephiroth’s shoulder, across the far side of the room and incongruous in the tired wallpaper, was a set of double fire doors. The words ‘Emergency Exit’ were lit in green above them, glowing dully. They hadn’t been there before.

Huh.

“I have things to do,” Cloud said, looking back at Sephiroth. “Darkness to defeat. A kid to thank.” Cloud smiled for a moment at that. “There’s worlds out there that need rebuilding.”

“You can’t be rid of me,” said Sephiroth softly. The rage in his eyes burned, banked, unstoppable, even as his voice moved in a low murmur, the dull horror of the familiar.

“I know.”

“Every world. Every new place. This is us… forever.”

A beat. “I know.”

Sephiroth moved, then, sudden and unexpected. He came in close with his lethal, inhuman speed, too close, pressing a hand possessively up under Cloud’s shirt, leather warm against the bare skin of his back. Cloud jolted, back arching in surprise, and Sephiroth used the movement to press him even closer, to lean over him. Cloud’s skin was lighting up electric at the… at the _everything_ , singing chattering pulses through his nerves. Gaia, there was just so much _noise_ in his head as he looked up at Sephiroth, startled, five separate impulses fighting for first shot. He couldn’t hear his own _thoughts_.

Cloud’s hands hovered, unmoving and shock-still, above Sephiroth’s arms. Sephiroth leaned even further forward, and Cloud wondered crazily what he'd do if Sephiroth kissed him.

He didn't know. He didn't _know_.

“We are connected, Cloud,” murmured Sephiroth, tilting his head again. Cloud had been this close to him before, but only ever with crossed blades and blood between them, never this empty expanse of possibility. Sephiroth’s eyes were cold and fixed, amused and enraged, hybrid signals and clear interest. “You can’t run away from that.”

Cloud’s breathing was erratic. Gaia, he felt like he’d been plugged directly into the mains, skin crawling with electricity. Against every ( _every_ ) instinct, he closed his eyes for a second, grounding himself in the simple truths: Sephiroth could only hurt him, here, as much as Cloud allowed him.

“Yes,” he said, forcing calm. “We’re connected. But it’ll only ever be on _my_ terms. As much or as little of you as I want. And I’ll stop you. Every time. No matter what it takes.”

“Even if it's your heart,” Sephiroth asked, tracing the vulnerable centre of Cloud’s chest with his other hand, the lightest pressure. (Cloud jerked a little under the touch, breathed out half a gasp. He could not have stayed still to that if it had killed him.)

 _Gaia_. That could mean — that could mean _anything_.

“Whatever it takes,” Cloud murmured eventually, and took a deliberate step back. Sephiroth let him go without restriction, possibly mindful of the bartender and its _unusual_ method of barkeep diplomacy, but the cut of his mouth said it had only ever been his own decision.

Cloud breathed deep, once, and looked past Sephiroth’s shoulder to the fire exit. It was still there, bizarre in its mundanity.

Ahh.

“I have to go,” said Cloud evenly, eyes fixed on the door. It was easier than he expected to step around Sephiroth, to leave him behind and walk calmly past the tables and across the worn carpeting to the other side of the room. The ghost pressure of long fingers against the very centre of his chest, tracing a scar long-since healed by four years in mako, lingered beyond reason. Cloud touched his sternum once, briefly, as he stopped in front of the doors. The pressure didn't fade.

“See you out there,” Cloud added over his shoulder, never quite looking away from the doors, and pushed against one of the metal bars. It opened with a faint squeak, and Cloud stepped through it without hesitation.

The place beyond the doors was very, very white, but only for a moment. Cloud set out; he had work to do.

* * *

‘The darkness’. Hah. Cloud was right; this place really _didn’t_ do subtle.

* * *

The attentive silence of the bar was broken by a wolf whistle. “Where do _I_ get a nemesis like that?” demanded Ursula, fanning herself with a beer mat. Low murmurs of conversation broke out across the room.

“I thought we said no fighting,” said Pete. He stared at the spot where Sephiroth had been, openly perplexed.

“That,” said Maleficent delicately, “was not fighting, though I understand why it might have looked so.” She held up her now-empty glass meaningfully at the bartender. It was cleaning the longest length of the bar with a cloth, end to end with a single sweep of its arm, thirty feet at a time. It paused for a moment, looking implacably at Maleficent, and turned to the spirit shelf.

“Then who won?” Pete demanded, frowning.

“Now _that_ is the question,” replied Maleficent as Hades brought her drink to her, along with his own faintly-steaming goblet and a bowl of mixed nuts.

“Yeah, no kidding, toots.” Maleficent closed her eyes briefly in long-suffering disdain as Hades dropped himself down in an empty chair, slinging one arm over its back. “I got a betting pool here with no clear winner. I was giving two-to-one odds in favour of tall, silver and homicidal, not to mention the bonuses if one or both of ‘em got eaten by the barkeep.”

“Roll the pot forwards,” suggested Hook, twirling his moustache. “Heart of a pirate, that tall one. He won’t give up the chase easily, mark my words.”

“I assumed he was one of the Heartless,” said Jafar, gliding up to the table with a smug look. “And I do believe you owe me, Hades. Our bet _was_ for there to be physical contact, was it not?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Hades said, disgruntled. He pulled out a few coins, glinting oddly in the bar lighting, and tossed them to Jafar. The faintest sound of screams followed them, ethereal in the air. “It wasn’t _exactly_ the bet, y’know.”

“Much obliged,” said Jafar smoothly as he caught the coins in a single deft movement. “And the devil is in the details. I never _said_ that they would kiss. I just… implied it.”

“Political subterfuge, your bread and butter, yada yada yada,” Hades replied dismissively, waving a hand. “Yeah, I get it, Mister Grand-Vizier. Oh, get the word out, will ya, we're rolling all bets into the next one. And tell the kitty-cat I don’t know what the hell that was we just saw, but it _definitely_ wasn’t a draw, he can try his luck on the next pot like the rest of us.”

“Scar will be _delighted_ , I’m sure,” Jafar drawled, and went back to his table.

“They’ll both bear watching,” said Maleficient with some finality, stripping an olive from its stick with her teeth and a calculated, cold efficiency. “That young man is not of the darkness, but the darkness chases him anyway.”

“You mean the newbie — he's a _good_ _guy?_ ” demanded Pete, affronted.

“He’s a man with a foot in two worlds,” Maleficent said thoughtfully, not quite a correction. “It remains to be seen which way he’ll fall. He is very… _determined_ , to be sure, but so is his counterpart. One or both of them could prove… useful.”

A short silence fell, insofar as it could be described as silence as Oogie fired up the Karaoke machine once more.

“Huh,” said Hades vaguely, staring into his drink, “Stevie Wonder again. Someone tell Jafar, he does a mean cover of ‘Superstitious’.”

“ _Don’t_ tell Shan-Yu,” said Hook, shuddering. “My ears have yet to recover from his rendition of ‘Isn’t She Lovely’.”

“The new guy,” Pete said abruptly. His face wore the look of someone doing a lot of mental heavy lifting to which they were not accustomed. “The short one. Clod.”

“Cloud,” corrected Hades absently, who was eyeing the karaoke stage with mild interest.

“Yeah, whatever. Do you think he knows that the tall guy has been, y’know, inside his heart this whole time?”

“Whaddayamean?” asked Hades, through a mouthful of salted peanuts. Maleficent, eyes distant, was watching the stage with polite interest.

“Well,” said Pete, “the tall guy’s his darkness. Like, a part of him, yeah? He only goes where Cloud is because he’s in Cloud’s heart. Loves him, too, kinda. D'ya think Cloud knows any of that?”

There was a moment of deep contemplation.

“Nah,” said Hades eventually. “These hero types. Never that bright.”

**Author's Note:**

> .....cömmént?


End file.
